Sara's Eyes
by Michelle Birkby
Summary: Inspired by Butterflied. Grissom talks to someone about Sara..a grisssara fic.
1. Default Chapter

The man facing Grissom had a distant face. He looked at Griss as if he were a specimen, nothing more, something to be analysed and explored and explained. It wasn't an insult. He looked at everyone like that.  
  
"We're are alike." Grissom asserted. "Scientists. Only interested in certainties. We're not interested in the emotions because they are nebulous, mutable, unable to be experimented upon, or fixed in a slide and studied, so they are outside our purview."  
  
The other man met his gaze impassively.  
  
"But lately, I've learned something. Science itself is not the immutable art we thought it was, when we were young, and chose our life. I have discovered that nothing is certain. Life, like science, is made up only of theories, to be proved or disproved. What we believe to be certain one day, can be totally changed the next."  
  
Grissom watched the other man, waiting for a sign of understanding, recognition. None came. Nevertheless, Grissom continued.  
  
"The mountain gorilla was, up until 1903, believed to be a myth endemic to the region. Then the first white man saw one, and we had to reassess our evaluation of myths. Maybe what we believe to be illogical or impossible is everyday life for someone else."  
  
Grissom's gaze faltered, and he looked away from the man opposite him, anxious to hide the sudden emotion in his face.  
  
"Sara had a case with a gorilla once. Just an animal. But she couldn't let go until it was at peace. She always has this need to bring peace to the dead."  
  
He looked up again, back at the other man's unflinching gaze.  
  
"There. You see? I wasn't going to mention her name, but suddenly she was there, in my mind. I can be doing anything, walking down the street, collating evidence, watching an autopsy....." his voice drifted away, and the other man blinked, as if he were uncomfortable with the emotion flickering through Grissom's eyes. "And she'll be there, in my mind, obliterating everything else." Grissom finished.  
  
"You see, it was the autopsy." He said, facing the man on the other side of the glass again. The other man seemed still, but his eyes flickered, full of pain. "They were so alike. And all I could see was Sara, lying there, on that slab. I don't know if Doc Robbins saw it too, but I did. And while, intellectually, I knew that Sara was back in the lab, or wherever I sent her..you see my memory is fuzzy on that point, which shows how much control I'd lost...emotionally, my soul was screaming."  
  
The other man grimaced in pain, but Grissom continued to watch him, talking, in a steady still voice, as if presenting a lecture. "I was screaming inside, 'Sara, I've killed Sara."  
  
The man behind the glass looked away, shaking, but the voice still came.  
  
"Why would I think that? I can understand being confused, the physical similarities were astounding, but why would I think I'd killed her? And why, after that initial moment, would I continue to think that?"  
  
The man watched Grissom, fascinated.  
  
"Because I did." Grissom whispered, and the other man's face lit up, a revelation in Griss's voice.  
  
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	2. chapter 2

"She offered me everything." Grissom said. "Everything I'd been yearning for, for so long. I didn't know I had been, but she did. She has more insight than I ever had. I know more science but she.." his voice dropped to a whisper, and the other man looked away, ashamed to intrude on such a private moment "she is more brilliant than I can ever hope to be."  
  
"I rejected her." He said, sighing, and looking up again. "I've thought why. It made sense at the time. She is younger, and a subordinate. It is not unknown for people on that position to develop a crush on their superiors, and that's what it was, a crush. So I turned her down."  
  
"Oh God." He said suddenly. "I lost her. I lost her." He turned away, his back to the other man. "She was there, and I lost her, and I killed the better part of both of us when I turned her away." He breathed heavily for a moment, then turned back, control regained.  
  
"I didn't recognise love. When in a room full of people discussing what they'd kill for, I bring in a different argument, the others turn away, lost in their own thoughts, she turns to me, challenging me, and I loved her then, and didn't know. When a man who tried to kill his wife challenges her and she stands up to him, I loved her then, and didn't know. When she almost left, and Catherine made me try to reach out to her, I loved her then. When I recognised beauty in her. When I taught her. When I learnt about her boyfriend, and for no rational reason I felt betrayed by her. When I saw her hurt. When she finally offered her love to me, I loved her, and didn't know. So many times, I have defined love as a chemical reaction, designed to propagate the human species. It's the scientific explanation. But I have another theory now. Love cannot be defined by poets or scientists. Love is defined for me by the look in Sara's eyes."  
  
He turned away, from the man behind the glass, pinching the bridge of his nose. He was so tired.  
  
"I don't know why I'm telling you all this." He said. "Maybe I should reduce things down to their simplest terms. I loved her. I love her. And she offered me love. She offered me herself. Every free, challenging, brilliant, beautiful part of herself. And I was afraid. Afraid of the change she'd bring, of what she would see in me that no-one would else had ever seen. Afraid what her eyes, her clear, loving gaze would see. Afraid of no longer being the scientist, but just a man, defenceless and exposed.  
  
Simply. I love her. She loved me. I rejected her, and she warned me, one day it would be too late."  
  
He looked down, then back up at the other man, his face full of pain and fear and loss.  
  
"Tell me." he whispered. "How do you tell a woman you love her? I don't know. And she won't see it in me any more. I lost her. I may have killed her. How do I get her back.?"  
  
"Grissom?"  
  
Grissom turned around. Nick was standing in the doorway of the men's bathroom, looking puzzled.  
  
"Yes?" Grissom replied, calmly. Nick looked around.  
  
"I heard voices." Nick said.  
  
"That was me." Grissom replied, unfazed, washing his hands.  
  
"Who were you talking to?"  
  
"Myself." Grissom replied, gesturing towards the mirror. The other man gestured back. "I find it often helps me to work through a problem to talk to myself."  
  
"Yeah, well, you're probably the only person who can understand what you're talking about anyway." Nick said as he walked in, and Grissom walked out.  
  
"Did you solve it?" Nick asked. Grissom paused in the doorway.  
  
"Solve it?"   
  
"Your problem." Nick prompted.  
  
"No." Grissom said. "No, I think it may be too late."  
  
THE END. 


End file.
